civil service barely numbering 1000 men. A mere nothing in numbers; a handful of salt in the Indian Sea.
Therefore, in this third stage of our Indian career we have apparently been successful. Lord Curzon tells us, as indeed we know, that "wealth is increasing in India. There is no test you can apply which does not demonstrate it. Trade is growing. Evidences of prosperity and progress are multiplying on every side." The blue-books furnish the same story. Thus, if in India we began as traders, and continued as rulers, we are becoming, up to date, the successful agents of prosperity. On this showing, all may seem to be for the best.
But, then, if so, what need is there of any fourth phase? Why should India require more than all that she has already obtained at our hands—order and safety, and public works, and law, and sound finance—signal benefits these? And truly, these gifts are indeed important. But that India will rest content with them, or that the Asiatic future of England is to be limited to such services, no one will be so blind as to suppose.
In order, however, to understand why a fourth phase will be necessary, and the nature of it, we must look a little more closely than hitherto at the third, in the midst of which we stand.
To begin with, it may be questioned, on a closer survey of what we have done for India, whether our administration, even in its strongest points, that is, in the points of order and safety, of public
